The development of the coronavirus pandemic, its aggressiveness, is also the bitter fruit of the devastation of nature, the loss of species biodiversity, the destruction of the habitat of wild species, deforestation, pollution of the environment, seas and air and climate change caused by capitalism and imperialism.

Italy in 2020, which has faced the pandemic virus, is an Italy weakened by decades of cuts, privatizations, reduction of hospitals and beds, dismemberment of locally based medicine, weakening of intermediate and home care and of the network of general practitioners and paediatricians .

An Italy that has constantly cut healthcare personnel, blocked the recruitment of doctors, nurses and healthcare technicians.

An Italy that, under centre-right and centre-left governments, as well as the "technocractic" governments, had already taken 37 billion euros from the health service in 10 years, but whose cuts have now lasted almost thirty years. It has resulted in corporate organisation, privatization and the progressive breaking up of all solidarity between the different parts of the national territory.

All this has inevitably contributed, in the phase of the pandemic explosion, to the deaths of thousands of people and two hundred health workers.It is necessary to radically change direction, to say enough with this state of affairs.

For these reasons, seeking the widest possible unity of action with all the political, trade union and social forces, we collecting signatures in support of a popular petition for:

* a single public and secular National Health Service, managed by the State, resolving the current system of regional autonomies;

* ending the forms of direct or indirect financing of private healthcare, with the absorption of the staff employed in it; abolition of healthcare provided by the third sector with public funds or with tenders financed with public money;

* setting up a public centre for research, production and distribution of medicines and medical devices;

* abolition of all prescription charges, all forms of payment by users;

* a big increase in the financing of the national health service, to be achieved also through the cutting of military spending, the reintroduction of highly progressive taxation on incomes and an asset tax on wealth;

* the redefinition of the structures of prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, hospital and territorial services, also through the reopening, where necessary, of closed hospitals and ending outsourcing

* reproductive rights and proper financing of Family Advice Centres, free abortion and contraception for all women;

* reducing waiting lists to the absolute minimum, reviewing existing organizational and management models, ending specific payments for external doctors, , investing in means and personnel; obligation to manage demand for all health activities, without leaving people in the tentacles of the free market;

* ending the limits on the numbers allowed to accessuniversity training for doctors and health professionals;

* an emergency plan to give secure contracts to all personnel with temporary contracts and to hire all medical personnel, professions, and health care workers, with permanent contracts, which will facilitate the training of stable teams, with improved care;

* a policy to adequately recognise the work of health care personnel;

* the maintenance of the single text on safety in the workplace (81/2008), against any hypothesis of criminal immunity for employers.

We are for a public health service, free, secular, and of real quality!

Read more:

For a public health service that is universal, secular and free of charge - International Viewpoint